


little windows

by Kirta



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings Online
Genre: Gen, and then you write a very little bit, but only a little', i think these are all less than 500 words each lol, most are in fact less than 250, sometimes brain goes 'you can have a little inspiration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25301935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirta/pseuds/Kirta
Summary: A collection of some very short pieces about various characters around lotro, most of them written at ~2am because. sometimes it's just like that. Each chapter is a different character.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	1. Narmeleth

They call it Delossad now- she can hear the name in whispers they think beyond her ears but the walls are stone and there is no other sound but for the drip of water and the tumult of her own thoughts. Sithad it had been, those hundreds of years ago when her father had kept her here, and though the walls still were stone and silent but for her and her keepers it had been no ruin. Now the roof caves in and the floor is sometimes knee-deep water and the stone is slick from centuries of damp and algae and moss. She is a prisoner again and though it rankles that part of her that will always be the Champion, no matter the box into which she tries to cram every impulse and desire she has ever ascribed to Amarthiel, she is settled now in a way she has not been since before the forging of Narchuil. There is no false cheer or friendship from her guards and there is no pretense that she is not a prisoner. It is fitting, she decides, that she is here again and here she shall await her judgement. She has few doubts as to what it shall be. Her father was the only one who might yet speak for her and he- the memory and the grief is sharper than Mordrambor’s blade but not half as deadly, nor half as painful as she deserves. She seeks not forgiveness- it is well beyond her, and she does not blame those who would withhold it from her. They have every right to do so. Atonement, perhaps, is within her reach, though she has little enough to offer and even less that they would trust. She wishes, some nights, that things might be different, but it is far, far too late for that. An Age at least too late. There is little she can do now but sit amid the ruin and wait.


	2. Gun Ain

It is warmer, this far south. All the rest of her surroundings are as different but it is the heat she notices first. Warmer than the iron towers that had loomed over her home even from a distance as a child, warmer certainly than the ice and snow of her exile. The air is wetter, too, particularly near the rivers, and she remembers the brilliant blue and yellow of the springs in Malenhad and she feels so very far away from home. She laughs at herself. Home? She has no home as she has no name. She was cast out and now she has only this, her resentment and her memories and a pointless search for that which she will never have. The Wizard… he offers her all that she wants and though the wiser (perhaps crueler) part of her distrusts it she is desperate, and even she can still hope for mercy, it seems.


	3. Sigileth

She falls into darkness. Her blades are gone. She cannot see and all she can feel is pain for the longest time. It could be days, or hours, or years. You could tell her any of these answers and she would believe you. When she can walk again she discovers she is trapped by a weight so heavy even she cannot move it. The Hall of Voices bars her way and she is trapped in the depths and she is alone, alone. She cannot reach the rest of the Host. Can they reach her? Do they even know to try? Have they tried, and failed? (Do they know and choose not to try?) She thinks to scream, to cry for help, however it galls her pride, but no- she is not alone here after all. Other creatures, servants of the Enemy, pass her in the shadows but this, the sneaking and the killing, this she knows, and she commits herself to it and tells herself that she has not been abandoned by the Host or the Lord and Lady. The Hidden Guard still stands.


	4. Elessar

He looks out across the city in the dawn and thinks of two dozen tasks that must be attended that day. They are routine, by now, and do not trouble him as they had for so long, those first months and years. Still though there is the sense of a task unfulfilled that hangs over him. It is not the day-to-day duties of a king- those are a weight of a different sort, he has found. This, this is something else, and when he looks at it within himself in the last of the starlight he thinks this is something far older than the kingship. He had picked it up when he ceased to be Estel, this thing, an expectation of greatness and glory and always of more. Birthright, a price, the past and the present and the promise of the future- but he is here, now. _May I be content, now? I have accomplished what I set out to do. What more am I reaching for_? But no answers come to him as the stars fade before the Sun and still the urgency is there, hanging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah ok aragorn is hardly lotro specific i know :P


	5. Vóin

Of them all, he is the only one free. At least, as free as a servant of the Dark Lord in his domain may be. One dead, one turned, three imprisoned, the last bound. He will find a way to free them. He _will_. Bozhéna… she will understand, if he can explain it to her. _When_ he can. He will spend as many years as he must playing this part to save them, but save them he will and then he will return to his home. Eärnur smiles for him, but he can see how it gets harder and harder every time, and he tries to ignore the fear building in him and the terrible weight of all he does in service of evil for the sake of these people he loves. He _will_ save them. He _must_. (One dead, two turned, two imprisoned, one bound)

Seven more years and naught to show for it. Eärnur’s strength is not limitless and the day he gives up Orthadel the relief is clear as day in his face. His friend hides his own pain, sharp as the sword’s bite. He _knows_ then that he has failed them. This one thing he can do still, though it cost Orolang all that is left to him. He will never know what became of Macilnis. He wishes he did not know what became of the others. One dead, three turned, one gone, one lost and bound and him, the one who walks from Mordor, alone as the day he walked in.


	6. Corunir

He should go back through the mountain pass himself, or at least send another bird. He should. Instead he stands again before the Watchers and he can feel them reaching for him, even here on this distant hill. He can see them and so they see him and even here he feels- or perhaps only imagines, remembers- the weight. Cána said that the stones cast fear as well but he hadn’t felt it. He had fear enough of his own, that day and this, any more would pass unnoticed. Fear he knows, though, and fear he can push through (and all the easier if his friends need him to) but this, the weight, is more than fear, though it drags the same in his chest. _You cannot_ , it says and he believes it and he falls to his knees, no matter that he can (still? again?) hear their screams begging for help that he could give if he could but _move_. But the weight presses down and he cannot. He weeps and thinks that if he cannot help them he at least will not let the trapped die alone and he stays there kneeling until Cána finds him and guides him back to Aughaire for the third time in as many months.


	7. Lothrandir

He can hear the crashes early in the morning (he thinks it’s morning. He isn’t really sure anymore) and for a time thinks nothing of it. There is always noise here- a few crashes more means very little. There is nothing noteworthy about one more day imprisoned until the depths begin to empty in a rush, orcs and goblins and uruks rushing to the surface. The crashes seem far more important, then, and he wonders what is happening. The Ring had been assaulted a week before, but it had been driven off with ease and the caverns had been filled with mocking laughter afterwards. Morflak had not returned after that day, though, so perhaps it was not all evil. He gets no answers and is instead corralled into a cell and locked in, and has no answers still as water pours into the caverns from above. Eventually the flood slows and the passages fall silent. Time passes, and passes, and passes, and nothing happens. No prison-guards or overseers or escapees or other captives or looters or, though he hardly dares hope for it, rescuers. How ironic, he thinks, to have survived all of this, to have resisted Saruman, only to die forgotten in a box. He can hardly even bring himself to be bitter about it, and settles instead on a grim amusement as even more time passes. When he finally hears footsteps splashing through the halls, he swears he is imagining it.


	8. Kenned

He is dying. He knows this, and honestly he had expected it to come far earlier than this. He had expected, too, to be far more alone. He recognizes none of the faces that press so near to his, full of anguish and guilt and love under it all, nor does he recognize the name they speak to him, but he has not recognized much in some time. Beyond these strangers are two faces he does recognize, just barely. That one was kindness for a brief time, and that one was only cruelty like so much else here. He does not know the strangers’ voices or the clothing that rubs against his scarred skin, but he knows they care deeply and they try their best to make him comfortable before the end and he does not feel alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kenned really just has no idea what's going on huh. mair mentions that he hasn't been around for a few days and that he's probably out hunting your first stop in tur morva, and then after that you see him when you're captured and when you rescue lothrandir. poor guy


	9. Glathlírel

It has been so very long since she breathed the clean air beyond the Rift, so long that she no longer notices the smell or the harshness of it against her throat unless she makes an effort. She misses it, sometimes, but mostly she does not think about it, lest the longing to see green things again become too much, too like the sea-longing she knows has taken others, and in a moment of weakness she abandons her charge. There are others who might take a turn at the watch for her, but there are few enough she could leave here for any length of time and should the worst happen while she is away she would never forgive herself. And so she stays, and guards Thaurlach, and waits for something, anything to change.


	10. Macilnis

She has known Vóin more than half a century now. He may have grown more proficient at deception in the years he has spent in search of them, but he cannot lie to her. He insists they do not have the time for lengthy explanations, but she will not leave without her king unless the dwarf’s next words are very, very convincing.

But as she cannot believe the lie that might have hastened her escape, she cannot disbelieve his next words. She has always been the fastest of them, and even after the years here in the Houses it is still true. She is fastest… and she will be the last. They all have suffered much for love of Eärnur, though. What is one more cut? Vóin opens her cell and gives her the sword, and the look they share is heavy with regrets. She runs.

As far as she can take it, Vóin insisted, and she plans as she runs and claws her way through the mountains until she can leave the morgul-sheen and the reek of Mordor behind. Perhaps she will take it all the way to Forodwaith, and cast it into the frozen depths after the palantíri and the Last-king. Yes, that will do, if only she can make it to the end of this day, and the next, and the next.


	11. Golodir

There's a feeling on his heart. That much is not unusual, hasn't been for years now (worse, of course, these last few months- by the Valar has it really only been months? it feels like it's been no time and forever) but something today is different. The ships creak around them and the Dead are only just departed and there is little enough familiarity around but something about this feeling he knows. But it can't be, and he tries so hard to believe it, and to ignore the way his skin crawls and the sudden urge to look over his shoulder, certain he will find Mordirith there, even though the False King is gone, dead at the hand of Laerdan's daughter- isn't he?


	12. Urudanî

She has never felt fire as Ugrukhôr in his folly did, but she knows the flame. None who walk in Mordor can avoid it, and she has felt the burning of the Eye ever-present since she became Gúrzyul. She chooses the Caverns of Fire to be her stronghold and within she finds more fire still. The Horror does not frighten her and neither do the flames he commands, for she is Deathless and she is proud and this is to be her domain, no other’s! Neither fear nor the lack of it protect her, though, and the Great Rogmul reaches out and flames consume her, burning and burning and inescapable and close. It burns away her clothing and her flesh and her soul until it is all that is left, and even the burning of the Great Eye is distant, and she knows only the fire.


	13. Wenda

Tûr Morva had seemed a strange place at first, but in time and with Seren and Anirin’s encouragement she felt less and less a stranger here. Lhan Tarren still feels very far away some days, but for the most part she is content. 

Seren shares her anger when Lheu and Mair turn on the Northmen. Seren brings the news home in a fury and rattles the dishes with her anger. While her mother-in-law rants, she watches through the window. Nothing has been truly calm in months, but something about this night is charged. She can hear shouts from higher up the mountain, and as they come closer she can make them out. There are protests against this new turn the Hebog-lûth are taking, and other voices, louder, angrier- Mair and her most loyal. There is little time.

She urges Seren to flee, and buys the older woman just enough time. She pays for it with the others who dissent, and she is trapped under the earth while the greater part of her adopted people carry out their betrayal.


	14. Britou

He stands at the head of those who had followed him into exile so long ago. He refuses to bow to Rioc, to show him any deference. He had abandoned his king three thousand years ago when his words had bound them all to this hell. He would not have gone to the Númenóreans' aid either, had it been his decision to make, but neither would he have sworn any oath in the first place. That, and all that has come of it, had been solely Rioc's doing, and in the time since they left their Mountain for another farther north, he has grown no fonder of the man. Perhaps, for his own forsworn vows, he is an Oathbreaker twice over, but he has very few regrets in his life or un-death, and that most certainly is not among them.


	15. Mordirith

He knows how they see him, the Nine and the Gúrzyul and the other ancient powers here. He is the Witch-king’s creature- some might say a pet- and though they all serve Sauron in the end, if any show him deference it is out of fear of the Lord of the Nazgûl. He locks himself in the Tower of the Moon (Ithil that should never have been lost, that should always have been his peo- his.) and lets the others bicker over what remains of the Dark Lord's realm. The Lady of Blight may have nothing but disdain for him, but he still has secrets that she knows not. He watches the invaders from Gondor climb the city, not half as invisible as they think themselves. Some bravely come knocking at his door and he thinks with some humor that at least someone in this land still takes him seriously.


	16. Lorniel

She does have reason for her confidence, besides desperate hope. They are as prepared as they can be and she is certain her intelligence can be trusted. The only question, then, is whether or not all her planning and skills will be enough to get them into the heart of the city. 

She has imagined it before, of course, with any and every outcome. Only once did she dream it, though- not the rescue itself, but an after: her father, sitting in his room in the caves, older than she remembers him. The door opens and he looks up and smiles. 

That is all she sees, but she remembers it with the clarity of the foresight so arbitrarily gifted to the Dúnedain. Whatever else is left unexplained by the sight, she knows her father will eventually be freed, and that alone lifts a great burden from her heart. There is still everything else- the war, their losses, the idea that they might be losing- but the easing of the fear and grief makes the rest of it that much easier to bear.


	17. Horn

Ah well. Let it not be said he went into this unknowing. He knew when he opened his mouth in Edoras what he was risking. He did not spend all this time in the court of the King without learning something of its rules. Still, someone had to say it, and he was willing. He knows what he risks now by speaking for this injured woman, he knows what they say of the Wood that may be her only salvation (he has told many of those tales himself), and he knows what leaving Stangard means for one whose time here is not yet expired. It changes nothing, but let it not be said he goes into this without his eyes open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> horn may spend most of his time with you as a lovesick idiot, but he really does just Do Things yknow? he managed to get thrown out of edoras twice (and neither time involved dying, more's the wonder)


	18. Núrzum

This is wrong. _Wrongness_ is not a thing he ever thought to feel for himself, but this… this is not right. He fled the foothills and the ice-blue lake, the horn-voice echoing, and alone, wounded, he would have died. 

The one that came to him looked as any of the others that had chased him back to the mountains, but he could feel at once the power that lay hidden. Life offered to the dying. Why would he refuse? (And oh, the Wizard was so convincing…)

But this, though, this is not what he wanted. The cold stone on his back, the wood tying them together. He feels revulsion, sometimes, that does not come from him. Was it a tree? Is it? Does it linger still, like the scars grown over and and the frost on his shoulders? He doesn’t think it wants this, either. He doesn’t want to share his mind, his body, his power (the _stone’s_ power, _my_ power, the Wizard reminds him).

He hates it.


End file.
